Games and Reminiscence
by Riyawrithi
Summary: On one of his days off, Bakura sits at home with Malik and Akil, playing games and recording tapes. He's not very fond of being on camera himself though, and Malik's enjoying holding a penalty from a lost bet above his head to make him do things..


The Thief baby now has a name; he's Akil. This story takes place in the Family AU Milliekou and I have been working on. Thanks to her for reading it for me and providing feedback. She's on Tumblr and Wordpress as Milliekou.

Language notes: Jumper is British English, Americans call it a sweater. Nappy is British English, Americans call those diapers.

* * *

"Which one's the cat? Is it this one? No, that's a tiger."

"Tigers are a type of cat."

"Don't be pedantic, Bakura, it'll confuse him."

"Okay, fine, we'll put aside the specific animals for now. Try again with the simple ones."

Malik sat kneeling on the floor of the living room, wearing a simple cream coloured skirt and a lavender turtle-necked woolly jumper. In her hands were a pair of hollow plastic blocks with different illustrations on each side, depicting various different animals. Similar blocks were spread out on the floor around her and the baby, who sat next to her playing with them, wearing a nappy and a grey t-shirt that matched his hair, with an image of a rabbit on the front. The blocks surrounding them were from several sets; one was specific animals like tigers, zebras and giraffes, two of which Malik set down at Bakura's statement, a set of simple animals like cats, dogs, mice and birds, and a set of blocks with letters of the English alphabet on them.

Sat cross-legged on the other side of the mess facing them was Bakura, recording the scene with a camcorder with a blissful smile. He wore a pair of ripped jeans that had seen better days, and a loose white and blue striped t-shirt he'd stolen from Ryou. From Bakura's position on the sofa that he'd pushed back towards the wall, he could see that several English blocks stacked into a triangle by the baby spelled "SAP"; he couldn't help but wonder if Akil was trying to tell him something. Malik carefully sorted the specific animal blocks from the rest of them and set them aside, picking up some general animal blocks and checking what she was holding before talking to the baby again.

"Akil. Akil! What are these? Which one is...A bird?"

Akil squinted at the blocks for a moment, then pointed towards the block in Malik's left hand, which did have an image of a bird on. "Well done!" Malik said, smiling.

Akil giggled and made an indistinct sound, picking up more blocks and pushing them together. Malik looked over at Bakura, tilting her head. "Are you going to appear in any of these tapes, or just film them? He needs to play with his dad too, you know."

"I'm in some of them." Bakura replied defensively.

"Get in this one, then." Malik replied, patting to an open space next to her. "You know the camcorder doesn't steal souls, don't you?"

"No, that's me." Bakura muttered. He set the camcorder on a tripod and crossed the room.

"You're showing it your good side." Malik said with a grin.

"Oi! My face is on the front." Bakura replied, sitting down next to her and crossing his legs.

"I know." Malik smirked.

He played with Akil for a bit, balancing a block on his head and placing another on Akil's, challenging the baby to avoid dropping it. Actually, Akil seemed more interested in watching it drop and hit other blocks, but he seemed to enjoy himself, and Bakura was able to forget he was being recorded and play freely with his son, making funny faces and baby-talking to him, only interrupted by occasionally catching Malik smiling, watching him, and feeling the sudden urge to act like his usual self. He hated getting self-conscious; if it was just him and his baby there'd be no problem, but around others, even Malik, he often caught himself trying to act more stoically and indifferent, even though, in truth, he was delighted.

After a while, Akil started fidgeting and shifting uncomfortably.

"I think his nappy needs changing.." Malik noted.

"Good luck with that," Bakura said, slithering towards the camcorder, "I have to sort out this tape, I think it's done."

Malik raised an eyebrow. "You're not getting out of it that easily. It's your turn. Take him and change his nappy."

"Change his nappy? I was the Thief King!" Bakura looked at Malik as if slapped in the face, though he was exaggerating for his own amusement. He stood up, gesturing widely.

"I was known and feared throughout Egypt! Commoners spoke of me in hushed tones. Bandits spoke with reverence. Guards feared me and prayed I'd never slip by them. I've lived for thousands of years, and mastered hundreds of games. I was part of a dark god. And you ...Want me to change a dirty nappy?"

"Yes."

Bakura sighed.

"You can't get out of it just by self-aggrandising, Bakura." Malik replied, shaking her head. "You might have been a great thief king once, but now you're just a normal husband and father, so pull your weight."

"Do I have to?" Bakura grumbled.

"Well, he can't change himself. If you're that reluctant, I can always call in those favours you owe me."

"..Ah."

Before Akil had been born, Malik and Bakura had made a bet. They couldn't agree on whether they thought the baby would be a boy or a girl. Bakura was quite confident their child would be a girl, but Malik was sure it was a boy. Bakura, having a competitive nature that nothing could kill, proposed they bet on it, having never quite kicked his habit of gambling. He'd only been half-serious at the time, and rather thought "the loser has to do all baby-related duties for a month" was nothing after the high-stakes duels he'd been in before, but after losing the bet and experiencing what it was like to be a parent first hand, he was quite sure he'd made a terrible mistake. To make things worse, it turned out Mariku's sadistic streak wasn't entirely his own, as Malik enjoyed holding the penalty above his head at every opportunity to keep him in line when he'd try to be lazy or leave the more unpleasant aspects of parenting to her. He was hoping that if he just waited long enough, the penalty would be irrelevant, but he knew his wife better than to think she'd let him get away with that.

Bakura sighed. "Agh, fine. But I'll claim a petty revenge for this, see if I don't."

"You can't claim revenge for having to do something when it's your turn.."

He picked up the baby and carried him into the next room to get a towel and another nappy from the closet, washing his hands before proceeding with the unpleasant business.

When he returned, with a much happier baby, Malik was labelling the VHS tape from the camcorder. "What shall I label this?" She asked, smiling. "'Bakura trying to be a dad #3' or 'Akil playing with toys #2'?"

"Let's go with the latter.." Bakura said, setting Akil down and sitting next to him as he crawled over to another toy. "And I _am_ a dad, thank you very much. I even just changed his nappy."

"That's only because I forced you. Whatever happened to risking your neck for me when you didn't have to?" Malik asked, leaning back and supporting herself on the floor behind her.

Bakura scowled. "Well, I did, and I got blasted to pieces for it, remember? I sometimes wonder how things came to this. You'd think I'd have learnt not to associate with you."

"You do? I remember. I was surprised when you turned up still looking to get back at the Pharaoh. I thought you'd been destroyed. At the time I thought it was good riddance. It's strange how things turn out."

"Yes. It is.."

Some time later, Malik returned to the living room after putting Akil to bed for his nap to find Bakura sitting in front of the TV with his knees brought up to his chest, arms wrapped around, staring at the screen transfixed. The lights were switched off, and he barely seemed to notice Malik walk in. The camcorder sat next to him with the VHS ejected, but it was sat next to the device beside him; the tape that Bakura was watching was something else. On the screen was Malik as she'd looked the day they brought their baby home, wearing a pair of slim blue jeans and a beige jumper, holding the baby in her arms as she stepped out of the entryway. Bakura's voice, a bit distorted and quiet on the film but recognisable, rang out from behind the camera.

"I can't get over how small he is...Do people really start out that tiny?"

"Of course they do, haven't you seen babies before?"

"Well, yes, but...He's almost pocket-sized."

"I'm telling you, this is a normal size. Now quit complaining and pass me that camcorder. I'm not letting you escape being in this tape, too. Here..."

On screen, the camera span wildly, pointing up towards the ceiling and shaking as the sound of movement and shuffling was recorded, its close proximity to the camera making it come out more like rumbling and tapping sounds. After a moment the camera span again, swinging in several directions before it was levelled towards Bakura, who'd swapped positions with Malik, holding the baby carefully in his arms as if he could break from the slightest pressure, looking down at his sleeping form with a thin smile.

"Come on, Bakura. Show us a smile! I know you can make one. Not one of your creepy grins."

The Bakura on screen looked up from the baby and tried smiling for the camera, blushing self-consciously. He looked rather awkward, but his smile was genuine at least.

"Watching old tapes?" Malik asked, jerking Bakura back to reality.

"Ah...Yes. I was going to put the new one away, and decided to watch one of the old ones, while I was here."

Malik sat down next to him, crossing her legs loosely. "I love watching these. Do you remember when you bought that?" She asked, pointing towards the camcorder next to Bakura. "I thought you were so stupid at first. Why would we need to record things? We were there. But looking back now, I think you had the right idea. It's nice to look back and see how it really was."

She chuckled. "I'd forgotten how shy you were. You're very happy to film others, but whenever you're in it you look like you're waiting for the first chance to escape."

"But..." Her smile faded. "You don't look happy while watching this. Why is that?"

Bakura was silent for a few moments, staring intensely at the screen. In the footage, the baby woke up in his grasp and started crying, causing him to panic, much to his wife's amusement. He tried rocking the baby to calm him down, but it only made him cry harder, so they swapped roles again, Malik gently mocking his parenting skills as they did so.

"I...Don't deserve this." Bakura said. He spoke one syllable at a time, as though each sound was a step made with iron boots; a challenge just to keep moving.

Malik would have asked why he felt like that, but she already knew. In the time she'd known Bakura, he'd changed a lot from the person she'd met at Battle City, becoming able to feel more emotions, even fall in love. But the downside was that he'd also started to feel negative emotions again, like the guilt and regret that came with being able to empathise with his victims.

Bakura was silent for a moment, then continued to speak. "I joke, but...I was the Thief King. I was part of Zorc. I...Hurt and killed many people. And now I sit at home, watching tapes of my wife and son, smiling and... _Happy_."

He seemed to almost choke the last word out, as if it were foreign. He started to speak again, but couldn't find the words to vocalise his feelings, and took a moment before speaking again.

"There isn't...There's no justice in that. Not even revenge."

"Oh, Bakura..."

Malik shuffled up closer to him, pulling up her knees to save space, and wrapped and arm around his shoulders, pulling him in a bit closer, his head rest on her shoulder.

"No." She said. "It's not fair. That's what our victims would say. Why are we happy, while they suffered and died?"

She sighed heavily. "But here were are, with a home, and a baby, Perhaps we don't deserve this. But so what? We don't live in a fair world. Our experiences prove that. We could dwell on our crimes, punish ourselves, but what would it accomplish?"

Bakura looked up at her, finally making eye contact. His face looked almost blank, but Malik knew him too well. She could see it in his eyes; the same uncertainty and doubt she'd felt.

"It wouldn't change anything." Bakura replied, flatly.

"No, it wouldn't. All we can do is try to make the future better."

"But...How do I stop feeling this? I hate this feeling. I almost think I was better off numb. Sometimes."

Malik shook her head sadly. "I don't think you can. You just live with it. But you don't have to dwell on it. Just do your best to move forwards. Even if it's just one little step at a time. It's got us this far, hasn't it?"

Bakura smiled to himself, and kissed Malik on the cheek, sitting up straight. "You're right. What am I doing?"

"Wallowing in guilt. I know the feeling, but don't keep at it for too long, alright? Take it from someone who's felt it for a long time, it won't get you anywhere."

Bakura chuckled, and shook his head.

"No, I meant sitting in the dark watching old family videos."

"Ah, you're right." Malik replied, smiling. "Things like this should be watched together. Where's that tape of your first attempts at being a dad? I love that one. You didn't record over it, did you?"

"Hmph. I should have..." Bakura replied, folding his arms.

"Nonsense. You're adorable when you don't know what you're doing. Much cuter than when you're confident and smug."

Bakura made a grumbling sound. "I don't appreciate this mockery."

"Liar. Your ears are turning red. "

"That's just a trick of the light. Pay attention to the tape, not me."

"Alright. Just until Akil wakes up..."


End file.
